Having worked on creative projects spanning from software development to music production, we know that it takes many talented individuals with different skills to make things happen. In a perfect universe every person who helped create something--be it a website, a movie or an interior design concept--should be able to meta tag their commitment so that there’s a universal reference of who did what. Credictive was going to do exactly this--be a step towards fixing online attribution and a way for people to sign their work. It was less focused on
copyright
management (still a lot to do there but there’s a good legal framework) and more on
acknowledgement
and
credit.

Why would something as ephemeral as ‘getting credit’ matter? Because it does have a market value! The twin sister of attribution is discovery--if someone was impressed with your skills, there should be a way for them to get in touch with you and work with you. It’s about this connection that we cared the most. Helping people getting paid for doing what they love.

We still believe someone should fix online attribution. We thought it could be us but there are other challenges for us to explore and we can’t do it all at once. Hopefully one day this additional layer of information is there and the internet is one big talent marketplace powered by the currency of transparency. We will talk to anyone who wants to tackle that beast.

Luckily, some people noticed the problem and started solving it in different domains. Check
We Created It,
NeonGrid,
The Curator’s Code
(creative work, most useful for text / images),
Stipple
(images/photography) or the
humans.txt
(entire websites).
Vimeo
did a great job implementing credits a few months ago. There was also a Israeli-based company called Creddits.com but they seem to be down/closed. There’s something going on in that space, which makes us happy.